Last week, our colleagues Artūrs Plits and Laura Martinaitytė kicked off their three-part FinTech Risk Workout 2025 series, diving deep into the foundations of Strategic Integrity and Risk Appetite. They brought back a core realization that challenges how many businesses view risk: it cannot be delegated—it must be owned by everyone.
This post, the first in our series, breaks down the essential framework for ensuring your strategy and your security controls are always aligned.
Strategy = Risk. Always.
The first principle of strategic integrity is that risk is woven into the very fabric of your business strategy. Every decision, every new market entry, and every product optimization carries an inherent risk profile.
- The Mandate: Every single activity, whether directly operational or indirectly strategic, must align with strategic goals.
- The Metric: All risk must be evaluated in terms of achieving those strategic objectives. If a control prevents a goal, it must be re-evaluated.
- The Ownership: Risk management is the responsibility of everyone, from the executive floor to the operational team. It cannot be isolated in a single department.
The Three Categories of Risk
To effectively manage risk, you must first define it. Risk Management addresses three crucial, distinct categories:
- Strategic Risks: Risks that affect the ability to achieve core goals (e.g., outdated business model, incorrect market timing).
- Preventable Risks (Known/Internal): Risks that are internally generated and manageable with proper controls (e.g., fraud, human error, data leaks).
- External Risks (Unpredictable): Risks you cannot prevent but must build resilience against (e.g., sudden regulatory changes, infrastructure failure, economic shock).
The Journey Analogy: Aligning Objectives and Risk Appetite
To illustrate how strategy and risk management intersect, your Risk Team conceptualized a journey:
Imagine 20 people must travel 5,000 km in 10 days. This is the strategic objective. Risk management then defines the parameters for achieving this:
I. Strategic Integrity: Setting Realistic Goals
Goals must be aligned with the business model and its scale. Unrealistic objectives that are not grounded in reality cause frustration, distrust, and eventual failure—which is itself a massive risk.
II. Risk Appetite: Defining Zero Tolerance
Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) determine acceptable boundaries. This is where you proactively define your appetite for risk:
- Zero Tolerance: Is it necessary for all 20 people to reach the destination? (In FinTech, this translates to: Is any data breach acceptable?)
- Defined Tolerance: Is it acceptable for the group to divide into smaller teams? (In FinTech: Can we accept a service interruption up to X minutes?)
- Flexibility: Is using different transportation methods acceptable to meet the timeline?
The ability to take calculated risk is just as important as the knowledge to mitigate it. As Artūrs Plits states: “Risk management is not only the knowledge of how to prevent and mitigate risk, but also the ability to take the risk.”
III. Navigating Operational Gaps
Risk assessment must focus on challenges that impact the ability to achieve the strategic objective (the 5,000 km journey).
- Unforeseen Terrain: What if there is no road for 4,900 km? (Risk to reputational integrity if caught unprepared).
- Critical Gaps: The path is crossed by three wide rivers. (High risk of critical failure or loss if bridging solutions are not in place).
- Misalignment: Choosing resources not fit for the journey (Risk to efficiency and morale).
These are the known, preventable risks that require specific controls and planning.
Vialet’s Commitment: Resilience for Your Secure Journey
The takeaway from this first session is clear: Building resilience requires integrating risk intelligence into every strategic conversation.
We build our strategy and services with this robust risk framework in mind:
- Aligning security to strategy.
- Actively managing known risks.
- Preparing for external threats.
Join us for the next two sessions as we continue our deep dive into building a truly resilient financial operation.
